Search form

ACC Team Recruiting Consensus Rankings for 2014

The BCS champs also won the ACC's recruiting championship.

Rivals.com, Scout.com, ESPN and 247Sports.com are the four major recruiting services who all do an excellent job evaluating, tracking and ranking all things recruiting.

But they don't always agree and that is a great thing for fans. It also means the best way to rank the best classes in the nation is to average them all together and come to a consensus. One service may value quantity while another may value quality. One service may really love one prospect while another may not feel as strongly about him. Each site has its own metric for evaluating a class. Again, this is why Athlon Sports publishes its national team recruiting rankings as an average of the four big sites combined.

• Florida State won its fifth straight ACC recruiting championship by claiming the top class in the conference yet again. Jimbo Fisher has totally flipped the state of Florida in his favor since taking over and it has paid obvious dividends. Much like Ohio State in the Big Ten, the Noles appear to be distancing themselves from their conference foes in impressive fashion.

• Miami and Al Golden quietly put together a stellar class. Dabo Swinney and Clemson did the same. These two programs are the only two teams in the ACC who are even coming close to competing with FSU on the recruiting trail. These three programs generally lead the way in recruiting for this league and it happened once again in '14.

• There seems to be some major disagreements among the recruiting services about the ACC. In particular, Scout seems to be down on the league's better classes. Scout ranked Clemson 28th, Virginia Tech 37th and Virginia 51st. Those numbers are 12, seven and 15 spots lower than their team ranking averages. Mike London's class, which tied Florida State with two five-star signees, was completely disrespected by Scout. Which brings us to...

• London needs to win games now. Virginia had an excellent, albeit smallish, class. The Wahoos finished 36th overall and seventh in the league as London has proven his ability to recruit in the state of Virginia and the Atlantic seaboard. With a roster that is better than half of the league, the fourth-year head man needs to start winning games on the field to keep his job.

• Dave Doeren did an equally impressive job in his first full class despite not winning a single ACC football game this fall. The Wolfpack appear to be rejuvenated on the trail as the second-year coach is poised to improve this NC State squad in short order. It certainly doesn't appear like the Pack can get any worse in 2014.

• The new kids on the block are still struggling. Louisville is accustomed to finishing first or second in the Big East in recruiting so ninth has to be disappointing. Recruiting has never been Bobby Petrino's strong suit but to compete in the ACC, the Cardinals have to be better than ninth. The same can be said about Syracuse's second-straight 12th-ranked class in the ACC. Paul Chryst and Pitt have been the best on the trail of the new teams and again finished in the top eight (seventh last year).